Postcards
by LSupergirl
Summary: She won't let go that easily. R/L
1. Chapter 1

_"It was a beautiful shade of blue, but then again not exactly blue, it was more like lilac. But then again, not exactly lilac either, since it had a tinge of grey in it. To be more precise, it was the colour of heartache. But fortunately (they) had never been much troubled by heartache and so they did not recognize it."_

_-Susanna Clarke, from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_

He doesn't sleep much anymore. He finds it gives him plenty of time to think about her; it's hard not to. The process of disentangling _his_ life from _their_ life is a monumental task, made only more difficult by his isolation in California. He has picked up the annoying habit of having conversations with her, entirely one-sided, of course, in his head. Sometimes out loud. _What should I eat for dinner? Should I buy a bicycle? What could I have said to convince you to say yes?_ She never responds.

He can't help mentally replaying their entire relationship over and over again searching for clues. For every milestone, she was always way ahead of him. She kissed him first. She wanted commitment first. She said _I love you_ first. Was it such a leap to assume she was thinking about marriage long before he was?

It's the little things that sneak up on him. The memory of how her hand fit in his, the whisper of her breath on his ear. The sound of her laugh. A flash of blue that exactly matches the shade of her eyes in the morning. The temptation to call her beckons most minutes of the day. He's stayed strong so far, barely, but it's only (only!) been ten days. He feels like he's aged ten years.

The first one arrives innocently secreted in among the jumble of mail addressed to Current Resident and miscellaneous shopping circulars. He mistakes it for junk mail until he flips it over to reveal her familiar handwriting. He stares at it, caught off-guard, and slowly registers his new address. He flips it over . MEMPHIS, it announces. HOME OF THE BLUES. BIRTHPLACE OF ROCK AND ROLL. The I in Memphis is a red guitar.

He flips it over again. The sight of her familiar scrawl both soothes him and stings his eyes. He remembers a million other little notes: Buy more milk. Gone to the library. Finn stopped by. Listen to this band. I love you. He swallows painfully, then scans the postcard. Words and phrases leap out at him. _Job...Obama's campaign trail_..._Beale Street...Elvis..._ and a few sentences at the end. _I miss you so much. I'm still in love with you. Please let me know how you are._ And in large letters at the bottom: _Hello, Mr. Postman! _

It takes him two hours to figure out how she got his address. He's mapped out scenarios in his head of Rory scouring the internet, or sweet talking the secretaries at work, each one more ridiculous than the last (the last one being Rory hiring a midget gumshoe named Jack to follow him home from work) before common sense takes over. Honor, of couse.

This suspicion is confirmed by a phonecall, during which his much loved, pain-in-the-ass sister confesses to giving up the information. _I couldn't stand seeing you like that. She loves you, you idiot. You took her by surprise, that's all. _

_Surprise?_ he exploded. _We were together for two years! We were living together, damn it! _

_And in those two years, did the topic of marriage ever come up? I mean definites, not somedays?_ Her tone had been patronizing, thought it was softened by genuine concern.

He considered. They talked about jobs and location, of course. They'd agreed to factor each other in. But in what capacity?

_That's what I thought_, Honor had sighed when he failed to respond. _Work things out with Rory, Logan. Give her time. _

_She didn't want to marry me_, he'd said._ She said she didn't want to sacrifice her future. I wasn't enough_.

Two weeks pass in a flurry of work. He is so busy that she only haunts him at night when he is still and alone in his too-big-for-one house. _I'm a girlfriend girl, Logan. I have boyfriends, not escorts._ That one is hilarious, really. _Logan, Rory wants a career. She has no idea what it takes to be in this family. _Touche, Mom.

He's not sad and hurt anymore. Now he's bitter and angry.

The postcards continue to arrive irregularly, depending on where she is on the campaign trail. The next one arrives exactly sixteen days after the first, this time from Pittsburgh. It looks abused and battered, sneaker treads brazenly imprinting the surface. She has managed to fit an impressive potpourri of information in that small square of space; she spouts nuggets of interesting tidbits about Pittsburgh and short but colorful phrases to describe her fellow reporters: _huggable grizzly bear_, _Pippi Longstocking on crack. _

She doesn't mention the fact that he hasn't called. He reads them with an air of nonchalance, but can't bring himself to throw them away. He displays them on the refrigerator, Memphis lower and to the left of Pittsburgh, as if his stainless steel appliance is the road under her feet.

New Orleans, dated July 6, 2007. _Bourbon Street...Zydeco and Chinese food, remember?..._How could he forget? Cutting out of the club early, the memory of their parting at the Chinese restaurant leaving him woefully unsatisfied, skulking outside her door room, trying to determine if she was alone. Their first time. If he had known this was the final destination, maybe he would have thought a little bit harder about climbing out that window after all. But probably not.

Number Four makes no mention of location, though the gaudy font announcing GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN is clue enough. Also, there's the fact that he has begun following Obama's travels around the country via internet and TV. This one is solely about the people she left behind in Connecticut. _Grandma and Grandpa finally purchased property in Cape Cod...Mom and Luke are taking it slow, but I think they're going to be okay. Are we going to be okay? _

He marvels at her dogged denial of the situation. He can't help thinking _How is this different from us being engaged? _Aside from the absence of wedding planning and the one-sided correspondance, they are still very much committed to each other - he grudgingly, she willingly and without encouragement. Is it possible that the problem had been not in the idea of the proposal (spending her life with him), but the implications of the proposal (time to start planning the wedding)? It's not like he had a date reserved at the club for the nuptials.

How had his proposal translated to him OR career? He didn't remember issuing an ultimatum. Only his actions, he realizes with a sinking feeling, did all the talking for him. _I was the one who walked away_.


	2. Chapter 2

"_Do you think it would be fun—" Fiona shouted. "Do you think it would be fun if we got married?"_

_He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life._

_-Alice Munro, "The Bear Came Over The Mountain"_

He arrives home one sticky evening in late July. After fiddling with his keys, he pushes the door open and scoops up the pile of mail scattered on the floor. The mail and keys are tossed on the table. The limp tie quickly follows. He untucks his wrinkled dress shirt, shuffles over to the thermostat to crank up the air, then makes his way to the kitchen. He thinks he'll throw together some pasta and a salad. He hits the power button on the remote and the TV blares to life.

Fifteen minutes into the news, the water is boiling and the pasta is bubbling away. He is busily chopping vegetables when the news anchor's voice penetrates his hazy thoughts and snaps his body to attention. "...camp has established campaign headquarters in the Illinois senator's hometown of Chicago. The senator and his wife are expected to spend the next month in the Windy City aggressively recruiting volunteers in these final months leading to the all-important primaries..."

He drops the knife on the cutting board and leans on the counter, thinking. A loud sizzling tells him the water has just boiled over. He rushes to the stove top and turns the burner off. He grabs a towel, lifts the pot and carefully pours the pasta in the colander waiting in the sink. The steam forces his head to turn away and he catches sight of his refrigerator. Something clicks. He hastily sets the pot in the sink and strides over to the table.

Phone bill, credit card statement, take-out menu, circular, circular...postcard. Millenium Park. _Looks like we'll be staying for awhile. It's strange being here - Dean lived here before Stars Hollow and he'd describe all the places he used to go. Might head home for a weekend. I miss you. I love you. Rory._

He slouches onto a chair and contemplates the postcard. Dean. Yet another subject they'd never really gotten around to discussing. His sole memory of the one before him is clouded by a few years and an obscene amount of Richard's finest scotch. He remembers watching him walk away from her. Rory, looking like a million bucks (literally, dripping with Emily's diamonds), standing there, weeping, but letting him go.

Back before they were sleeping together, when they flirted and side-stepped and hinted and the air was thick with all the things left unsaid, he asked her about it. Once. _Why did it end?_ He'd sensed it was a deeply private question, one he'd have little chance of getting a straight answer to if she hadn't been slightly tipsy.

She'd tilted her head to the side thoughtfully, her eyes locking into his and holding him there. The noises of the pub melted away. _It was time. We weren't right for each other anymore, and hadn't been for a long time. We both saw it coming, it just took us awhile to accept it._

Something like a shameful memory flashed across her eyes then, and she had flinched. He had tactfully changed the subject.

Oblivious to his rapidly cooling pasta and half-chopped vegetables, he has a thought that brings him comfort. _I'm the one who walked away, but she hasn't let me go._

It occurs to him that he hasn't laid eyes on her in exactly two months. This is not okay with him. He types her name in a seach engine. Four pages of "Rory Gilmore" articles later, he finds what he's looking for. He clicks on a link to YouTube and waits for the video to load.

_A Film By Kirk_, letters in white against a black background. The film begins. A shaky handheld camera pans across many faces in a crowd. They ignore the camera and appear to be anxiously awaiting the arrival of someone. He recognizes many of the faces from the weekend he spent in Stars Hollow. The woman from the dance studio, Taylor, Luke, Lane, Zack, many more. The camera man trips and falls with a loud "Ow!" With a _thud t_he screen goes black, which turns to green as the camera is picked up from the grass. "Are you okay, Kirk?" someone asks. The camera points overhead to reveal a ceiling made of cloth, different patterns and colors stitched together by a no-nonsense hand.

Suddenly the crowd inches forward excitedly. "There they are!" someone shouts. The camera zooms in on a Jeep driving through the pouring rain. It comes to a stop. His breath catches as the passenger car door opens. The crowd surges forward and all he can see are the backs of heads. In all the cacophony he loses sight of where she should be. Then the camera pushes its way to the front of the crowd and there she is, looking around in shock. Lorelai is standing right next to her, looking equally amazed. Then everyone is shouting out congratulations and he catches sight of a "Bon Voyage, Rory" sign.

The camera ambles around the crowd for the next few minutes before it zooms to her face in an extreme closeup. "Uh, hey Kirk," she says, smiling.

"Rory, any last words for the citizens of Stars Hollow before leaving town, probably forever?"

She pauses. "Which one of us is the reporter here?" Then she points a finger at him. "If you think you're getting rid of me that easily, mister, you are severely mistaken. Thanks everyone, for doing all this!" She gestures around, her eyes looking suspiciously moist. "I'm going to miss you all so much."

In a sudden move that makes him feel slightly queasy, Kirk turns the camera to his own face. "Stars Hollow's own Rory Gilmore. This has been part one of a yet to be determined number of the series entitled 'Rory Watch: From Stars Hollow to the White House." The noise fades and the screen goes black. In white letters: _This has been a film by Kirk._

He exhales slowly. He clicks on the link. _A Film By Kirk_. The film begins again.

Later, after the ache in his chest still throbs painfully, he realizes. _I want never to be away from her._


	3. Chapter 3

_"When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let (her) go...All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience - if only he had had them both at once - would surely have seen them both through."_

_-Ian McEwan, from On Chesil Beach_

He thinks that he needs a change. He has spent so much time being hurt and angry and lonely and now he wants to not hurt (be lonely) anymore. Before they were together he never felt lonely. His life was so full of hijinx and debauchery that he welcomed the occasional downtime, time when he could allow the quiet to wash over his thoughts and he could just _be_. Now he knows that any moment spent away from her (emotionally, that is; to never be apart physically might not be realistic), is a moment wasted. He wouldn't take the proposal back; rather, he wishes he could go back and prove his resolve by refusing to walk away, by asking her every day until she gave a different answer.

Instead, he spends a ridiculous amount of time in seach of an appropriate postcard. Nothing he finds is quite what he envisions, so he chooses a random card from the rack and cruises the aisles in search of Elmer's glue. The next step is completed with the help of his computer and photo printer. Once everything is glued, written, and addressed, he drives to the post office. He purposely bypasses the avocado stamps (he doubts anything short of steel is strong enough to bear the weight of _those_ implications) and instead opts for the neutral American flag. He drops the homemade postcard into the mailbox before he can second-guess himself. After so many weeks of living inside himself, he thinks that maybe he can start taking up space in the world again.

It is delivered on a Monday in early August, but she is not the one to herald its arrival and recognize its importance. Instead, it is the dubious hand of the elder Lorelai that sets it aside in preparation for a much anticipated homecoming. Of course, she can't resist sneaking a peek. The front obviously refers to some sort of inside joke (how else to explain the image of the dignified Professor Asher Fleming, front and center, lecturing an imperious-looking Judi Dench in a field of bright pink flamingos while Russell Crowe, standing on the bow of a ship in the upper left corner, looks on?). She skims the message. Though left unsigned, she frowns. _So he's back_. She props the card prominently atop the stack of mail knowing (and resenting) that this 4x6 rectangle of cardboard, expected all summer and finally arrived, will make her daughter complete in a way she cannot.

She comes home the following Friday to wide-open arms and squeals of delight. Her mother, oddly without comment, points to the pile. She drops her overnight bag and automatically reaches for it. Her lips quirk into a smile when she spies his handiwork, the knot in her stomach slowly loosens. Her fingers lightly skim the surface, brushing over the uneven textures and layers as if they are his skin. _I miss you, too. Only four words, Ace, but they are the only ones I can think of to convey how I feel, plus three more: I love you. _

The rest of the day slips by in a blaze of love and gladness. So euphoric in everything being in its rightful place (she in Stars Hollow, he back in her heart), she misses the forced enthusiasm that masks her mother's trepidation. Much later, when they are both tucked away in their beds with plans to reconvene the next morning at Luke's, she remembers the expression on her mother's face. It puzzles her. But maybe it shouldn't. Her mother, so supportive about everything else, has never been the authority on successful relationships (excluding their own, of course). She hopes that her mother will be too busy getting her own relationship with Luke back on track to let her silent disapproval affect her own relationship (are they in a relationship again?) with Logan. The irony - that Lorelai, despite struggling her entire life to not become her mother, is more like her than she realizes (though their tactics are very different) - is not lost on her. She wonders why her mother so dislikes the man she loves and wills her to see him the way she does.

A gorilla reading a newspaper, apparently oblivious to the sticker of the black SUV hovering over its right shoulder. YALE DAILY NEWS is written in black Sharpie above the crossed-out headline. And underneath: _Us? _On the back she has written three simple words in stark contrast to the emptiness of the card. _In or out?_

The postcard finds its way to her in Chicago, nestled inside an envelope embossed with the name _Dragonfly Inn._ She reads the note from her mother first. _Hey Babe, I hope this belongs to you. Paul Anka says hello. _His card flutters from the unfolded page onto her unmade hotel bed. She grins. Finn's face photoshopped on the body of an old-fashioned policeman, her grandfather eating a cone of Fro-Yo, and an open book. His reply: _In. Consider my balls yours. _

His refrigerator is a scrapbook of her travels and their memories, so many that he can't open the door without hearing the shuffle of them falling to the tiled floor. He thinks he should probably take them down, maybe put them in a box (after all, now there are phone calls and email and text messages), but he likes seeing them there. It's hard being apart, harder for her, always on the move, and they haven't laid eyes on each other since May. But the campaign trail will bring her to him eventually. _And_, he realizes finally, _we have plenty of time_.


End file.
